Ricky and Krause were relieved to finally take showers, which were in the sparse living quarters of the chapel. They were bruised, cut, and dirty from their recent adventures and they hadn’t showered in about a week to begin with. When they were finally washed, they sat out in the chapel with a map that Krause had found.

"Alright," Ricky said, "Where are we going now?"

According to the map, they were now along the border of Greater Eagleland and the Sky Runner had taken them across Icy Strait, a narrow sea channel separating Winters and Eagleland. The nearest city on the map was the metropolis of Fourside, being about two hundred miles southeast via train.

"I say we make tracks for Fourside by tomorrow morning, or whenever the train comes," Krause said, "Maybe there’s a Sanctuary somewhere around there too. It’s up to you, though."

Ricky sighed. "I think we need a little break or something. After dinner, I’m getting to bed and I ain’t waking up until about noon. We’ll leave the day after tomorrow. How much more powerful can those pigs get in a day anyway?"
Krause looked around a bit. "I wonder where Ana went. She sort of disappeared when we took showers."

As if to answer his question, the doors suddenly flew open and in came Ana, panting and missing her strange hat.

"Ana?" Ricky said, "Where were you…I mean there you are!"

The woman quickly looked out into the snow and a distant shout and something like a squeal rang out.

"Come with me!" she said hastily, "Something’s happening!"

Another squeal broke out.

"Pigs!" Krause exclaimed.

"What tipped you off, the squeal?" Ricky called from the entryway as he dexterously slung his pack over his shoulders and drew his bat.

"Wait up!"

Krause whipped out the frying pan from his belt and got his pack half-on before a scream was heard and Ana bolted out the door. The twins followed as fast as they could. Ana was calling things like "Everybody get out of here!" and "Make for the cave!" over the screams that were becoming much louder. They had reached the edge of the tiny town when Krause finally managed to get his pack totally on. Their greeting wasn’t very friendly, to say the least. Two fully armored pigs wielding spears were chasing a girl who was screaming her lungs out.

"Stand back," Ana said before holding her hands out and saying, "PK Fire!"

The twins gasped as a fan of flames erupted from her outstretched fingers and spread out towards the pigs, which were closing in on the little girl. The pigs had only a moment to squeal before they were reduced to melted armor and charred pork. The girl was sprawled out nearby, whimpering softly.

"Hurry up, Penny!" Ana said, "We need to get out of here!"

The girl slowly climbed to her feet. Ana grabbed her hand and ran. Ana kept calling for everyone to escape. In little time, they reached a little bridge going across a half-frozen stream. They stopped for a moment to rest and Krause turned around just in time to see four pigs, the one in the lead at least seven feet tall and clad in black armor and wielding a large sword.

"Watch out! Behind us!" he shouted just in time to let Ricky dodge a spear that was hurled at him.

"Go on ahead!" Ana shouted, "Head for the train tracks for now!"

"But…"

"I need to protect my town, and I don’t want you getting hurt! Take Penny!"
Ricky grabbed the girl’s wrist and ran across the little bridge while Ana executed another PK Fire. They ran to a large pine tree and stopped to catch their breath. Ricky looked back towards the town. It appeared that Ana was now trying to fight off the largest pig with a burning branch. Beyond the bridge it looked as if the town was losing. A column of dark smoke rose from several houses and the shouts of people mixed with squeals of pigs. Penny whimpered.

"It’s okay," said Krause, "I think it’ll turn out for the better. And if you cry, the pigs will find us easier."

Penny began crying much louder and Ricky grimaced. "You really make me sad sometimes. We better get moving."

With that, Ricky grabbed Penny’s wrist again and began running, Krause following as fast as he could.

"Hey, bro! I think we lost ‘em! Maybe we could (pant) slow down a bit?"

Of course, as they looked towards the next stand of pine trees, four sword-swinging, shield-bearing pigs leaped out at them.

"Go hide somewhere!" Ricky told Penny, who obeyed without hesitation. The four pigs shot her a quick glance, then focused on the twins. Ricky and Krause got back-to-back like the heroes in the movies did as their enemies closed in. Ricky lunged out with his bat at the closest pig, knocking its little helmet off and sending it sprawling backwards into the snow. Krause tried his best to fight off the two that were attacking him, but a shield bash to the face stopped any further attempts. He slumped to the ground, leaving Ricky to deal with three highly trained evil pigs. They closed in and with one hard swing of his bat, Ricky shattered a shield and a pig’s wrist. The two pigs jumped towards him from either side, swords out to skewer him. Then Ricky suddenly remembered something Flint had done to two thugs in one of his stories and sidestepped the two pigs. Their swords hit each other and they both squealed and fell on top of Krause.

"Krause!" Ricky shouted.

"I can hear you…" Krause mumbled. He pulled himself up from underneath the two pigs, already covered in some darkish blood. Ricky just blinked.

"You look awful."

Krause glared with his blackened eye. But suddenly another squeal was heard and more pigs were rounding a corner, the one in the lead the large pig they had seen minutes earlier, only significantly more battered. Krause looked at one of the pigs’ large round shields; then noticed that they were on the top of a snow-covered hill.

"Not again!" said Ricky.

"They ain’t catching us this time," said Krause. Before Ricky could say anything, Krause snatched one of the fallen pigs’ shields and sat down in it.

"Krause, what in the hey are you doing?"

"Get on! They won’t be able to catch a sled speeding down a hill, would they?"

Ricky grinned. "That may be the worst idea I’ve heard since seedless watermelon, but we’re gonna die either way."

Ricky jumped on behind Krause and pushed off. The shields must’ve been very well polished, because they were going faster than Ricky had anticipated. The hill was also much bigger than anticipated, and Krause somehow hadn’t spotted the trees near the bottom. A spray of snow blinded them for a second, then they screamed as Ricky used his arms to navigate around a large pine tree just in time. They swerved back towards their course, Ricky doing an excellent job in avoiding trees. Suddenly something nearly grazed Ricky’s ear. He turned around and saw a pig riding on a sleek sled with runners. He gritted his teeth and steered hard to the right, just barely missing a tree.

"What’re you doing?" Krause shouted to him. He swerved back around and realized they were reaching the bottom of the hill. It seemed there were railroad tracks just beyond a little stream, and a train was approaching.

"When I say bail out, we bail out, okay?" he shouted to his brother. He steered around a tree and began counting. 1…2…

They had hit a log with snow piled on one side like a ramp that was conveniently right next to the creek. They were launched into the air, the train now moving by.

"We’re gonna die!" screamed Krause. But then the boxcars stopped and they sailed right onto an empty flatbed, skidded off of it and landed face-first into a pile of snow, the shield clattering off a rock right next to them.

"This is the last time I land in a snow bank," said Ricky.

"This is the last time somebody lands on me," Krause mumbled.

Ricky pulled himself up and watched the train go by. Suddenly he realized how cold it was and that he was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

"We better find a place to stay for now," Krause said, "I’m cold."

Something suddenly snapped in Ricky’s brain. "Wait a minute. We can’t leave Snowman for the pigs to burn down and the people living there to be slaughtered!"

"What?" Krause said, "Why didn’t you say that when we were at the top of the hill? I’m not going back up there now!"

"No, what I mean was, we need to go get help and warn the government about the pig threat."

"So we’re gonna follow the train tracks? That map said the nearest town ain’t less than two hundred miles away. I ain’t walking that far with these clothes on! And besides, if we make twenty miles a day if we don’t die of frostbite, it’s…ten days? By then the pigs will pick us out like crawdads in a barrel, stab us to death and eat us if they don’t take us captive and torture us until we beg to be stabbed!"

There was a moment of awkward silence.

"You’re making sense, Krause. But do you have a better suggestion?"

"Well…oh screw it. But I ain’t staying out here much longer. I can hardly feel my feet anymore."

The area around them consisted mostly of evergreens going up a gentle slope towards a bigger forest, but the train tracks seemed a better option than trekking through the woods. Maybe there would be a logging camp or something in before they reached the town…Before Ricky could advance his train of thought any further, it was abruptly derailed by a vulgar shout that rang throughout the valley.

"Long live the Pig King!"

Ana stumbled down the path, her breath coming out in gasps. Behind her the smoke from her sad village rose in black columns. Part of her was telling her to go back and fight the pigs for the sake of her town, another part was telling her to keep on her course to the cave to aid those who escaped, another was telling her to flee and hide and yet another was telling her that she was hungry. She stopped to catch her breath against a pine tree. Ana was a strong woman who usually wouldn’t be winded after a 200-yard run, but her brain was still throbbing from the fight at the bridge. It had been close to thirty years since she had manifested that much psychic energy at once; and it was taking its toll. She shook her head and continued at a less blistering pace. After following several pairs of footsteps into the snow, she reached a gnarled old oak tree overrun at the roots with dead underbrush. She parted some of the brush and stepped down into a large, well-hidden limestone hole the locals had affectionately called "the cave."

"Who goes there?" called the gruff voice of Chuck the lumberjack from the darkness, "I’ve got an axe here and-"

"It’s Ana," she said, walking into the dark. A small flame sprang from her finger and she looked around at everybody. Chuck, wearing a flannel shirt that was cut on the arm and holding a bloodied axe, stood in front of maybe a dozen or so frightened-looking townsfolk. Ana lit some dry wood on the damp floor with her finger and the little cave was lit up. She slumped down against the wall and sighed while everybody situated himself or herself around the fire.

"What are we doing now, ma’m?" a boy named Jonathan asked, "Are we even gonna try stopping those…pigs and try to find everybody?"

Ana sighed wearily. "I don’t know much about them and less about why they came to attack, but I’m afraid there’s not much we could do. They’ve already started burning our town, and about fifty people are still out there."

"Hey! What about those kids that went with you?" a man named Bert said, "Where are they now? That Rick kid used magic like you do."

Ana paused a bit before responding. "I can’t say anything as to where they are now, but there was something strange about them, despite the obvious fact that they fell from a strange aircraft…They followed me to the little bridge and I let them run while I held off the pigs. I’ll tell you the rest later. I’m going back to do what I can."

A silence fell on the circle of townsfolk as Ana brushed off her skirt and climbed back through the hole. If her observations were correct, only seven pigs remained in the actual town itself, but only God and the narrator knew how many more there may be. She quickly came up with a plan. There was a borderline ancient telephone in the hotel that had a direct connection to the Northern Eagleland Emergency Dispatchers phone board. If you can’t guess her plan by now, you should not be reading this right now. Quickly, she fought back her fatigue and dashed down the path towards Snowman. Suddenly a sharp squeal broke out; and just as suddenly, two club-wielding pigs leaped out of hiding from pines on either side of the path. As she held out her hand to unleash another fireball, one of the hogs swiftly lunged out and hit her square in the forehead. All went dark instantly and she crumpled to the snow-covered ground with a long groan. The two swine snorted horribly, their foul breath making clouds in the crisp air. The pig that hadn’t done anything grabbed Ana by her hair and began to drag her towards town.

"Long live the Pig King!" the other shouted in English, then he followed his friend at a brisk pace, snorting all the way.

Penny had half the mind to wail her eyes out and run like the little 10-year old girl she was at what she had just witnessed, but her intuition was screaming, "Don’t do that you nimrod! You might as well ask to be caught!" so she stayed put behind the rock. As the two pigs passed around the corner, she slowly crept from her hiding place. Even Penny knew how paranoid old Jack was, and how his phone had a direct line to the emergency dispatchers. She got on all fours and skirted around the pines towards the town. After what seemed like hours, she finally reached the first house, where she ducked behind a barrel just in time to avoid a hog marching around the corner. A few pigs were loitering around in the square, most examining the strange spaceship-thing that had landed hours earlier. She averted her eyes when the large, ugly pig appeared dragging Old Jack by a leg, grunting evilly. Three houses later, she crawled through the back window of Jack Hotel and landed with a loud crash behind the desk. Cautiously, she pulled herself to her feet, grabbed the receiver and hit the green button labeled EMERGENCY…